


A Wilderness of Mirrors

by Corinna



Category: MI-5 aka Spooks
Genre: F/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corinna/pseuds/Corinna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Quinn's last mission.</p><p>Spoilers through Season 3, and obliquely to Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wilderness of Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karaokegal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karaokegal/gifts).



> Thanks to Amy, Lucy, Livia, Punk, and Shana for help beyond the call of duty. Jools Siviter, it might help to know, was played by Hugh Laurie.  
> 

 

 

He gets taken so ridiculously easily: a stumble on the street, a gun to his back, strong arms pushing him into the empty storefront and the rooms behind it. In his old life, he'd have given them a fight, but he's a civilian these days, no backup, so he lets them push him around, scuffles his feet, waits for his moment. His captors release his hands once they have him in the moldy dark of a storage room, and he braces himself to strike.

"You've become unconscionably predictable, young Tom." The voice is plummy, self-regarding, and all too familiar.

Tom turns towards it, not quite lowering his guard. A light flips on, and then there's the man: Jools Siviter, looking almost as ridiculous as his name. He's wearing a pinstripe suit, perfectly, intentionally out of place in this grubby Philadelphia storage room, and he looks even fatter and smugger than Tom remembered.

"I would have thought that even a man trained by MI-5 would know not to establish so set a weekend routine," Jools continues. "What are they teaching you over the river there?"

"What do you want?" Tom says.

"You see? That's not a question you should be asking so early." Jools steps closer. "Amateur hour, showing you've nothing in your hand so soon in the game."

"I have nothing in my hand," Tom says, meeting his eyes. "I left the service two and a half years ago."

"And now you're back." Jools smiles: his teeth are the color of tea.

"I won't work for you," says Tom. "Not for Six, not for Five, not for anybody."

"Not for Harry?"

Tom can't stop himself from looking around the room, as though his old mentor might step out of the shadows. Harry, who'd set him free. "What about him?"

Jools folds his arms across his chest and begins to orate. "Harry Pearce, despite having every reason in the world to know better, remains an idealist. It makes him vulnerable to pangs of conscience and all sorts of interesting enemies. One of whom, as you should have worked out by this point, is making his move right now."

Something inside Tom clenches, ready for the fight, but he stays silent.

"Normally," Jools continues, "we prefer not to involve ourselves in Little Sister's endless internecine bickering, but the fact is, we need Harry in his place for certain plans to come to fruition, and so we're obliged to take up arms on his behalf. Which is where you come in."

"I have a life here," Tom says.

Jools rolls his eyes in disgusted amazement. "A life! And a dog! And a pretty little house with a set of wind chimes out the back door! Spare us the recitation, Tom. This is hardly a permanent recall. Just think of yourself as... oh, what do you call it? A sleeper. And you've just been woken up."

He smiles, the grin of a man who has said the cruelest thing he could, and knows it. Tom clenches his teeth, and doesn't speak.

"Cigar?" asks Jools.

* * *

Tom's found four bugs in the house before Christine gets home from yoga. They're all exactly where he thought they'd be, and he's not sure if Siviter's men are taunting him with the ones he won't find or think he's gone so soft that they needn't bother. He pulls Christine out of the house as soon as she walks in, covering her mouth with his hand and hating himself for how unsurprised she looks, and takes her on a walk through Center City.

"So, Harry Pearce says jump, and you still say 'how high'?" she asks. They stop so she can buy cigarettes. She'd quit last year.

"It's not that simple." Three weeks after he resigned from MI-5, there'd been a note left under the door, careful block print letters, with Christine's address in the States. He'd been on the next flight he could book, and he's only been back to the UK once, to pack up his things and sell his flat. He knows, but he could never prove, that the note was Harry's last kindness to him. If he owes Harry for nothing else, not for the lessons in a craft he's discarded or the example of decency to live up to, he knows he owes him for this. For the mornings he wakes up with the pale northern light spread across their bed and Christine burrowed beneath the covers, sweetly relaxed in sleep.

"Sending you into the middle of some covert op is like shining a spotlight on your stupid British head. There won't be anybody watching who won't know who you are." Christine is angry, and he realizes she's afraid of losing him again.

"That's the point," he says, taking her hand. "Harry's supposed to meet with an al-Qaeda double agent in New York next week. John Steerforth, the head of Five's surveillance unit, is setting him up - he's fabricating evidence that Harry's been turned by Qaeda himself. They want me to go to New York and get to the meeting before Harry does. Steerforth's men will think Harry's one-upped them, and if Harry arrives and sees me, he'll know the meet's gone bad."

She shakes her head. "Jesus. I can't believe we used to do this for a living. It's -- a hundred things could go wrong, Tom! Why can't Siviter send one of his own men?"

"He needs to keep his hands clean. Look, it's baroque, no question, but I don't have to do anything dangerous. I'll have a legitimate reason to be in New York -- tickets to the opera -- and I'm a civilian. Married to a former CIA agent. They're not going to send me to Guantanamo."

"Famous last words," she says, and her smile is anything but happy.

* * *

Tom's only been to New York a handful of times, not counting airport transfers. It's disconcerting, after Philadelphia, how loud and cramped it is, how tall and rushed. The meet's in a plaza on East 53rd Street -- far enough from the heart of Midtown that there are fewer security cameras trained on the sidewalks, but close enough that he can walk there from Penn Station, north and east across the city on a surprisingly warm late-fall day.

The plaza is spread out in front of a black steel and glass skyscraper, a failed attempt to make the building seem approachable and welcoming from the ground. There are sickly trees in cement planters, and benches, and a Starbucks and a sandwich shop in the building's lobby, with doors that face out onto the street. Siviter's instructions were clear enough: Harry's contact would sit on the bench at the northeast corner of the plaza, wearing a blue scarf. The meet was set for 3pm.

At 2:45, Tom buys himself a coffee and a slice of coffeecake, smiles at the girl behind the Starbucks counter, checks his wristwatch, and waits by the glass storefront to see who shows up. At 2:53, someone sits on the northeastern bench. It's a woman, in a long dark skirt and boots, a heavy jacket, and a bright blue scarf wrapped around her neck and head. He wasn't expecting to see a woman, but she's dressed modestly enough, and the scarf is like a blazon: it's the meet. He finds himself approving of having a woman make the contact as a pure piece of spycraft, and almost immediately the thought makes him ill. He's still got more of the instinct for the game than he'd thought.

2:55. He picks up his coffee cup and heads outside. He looks up as he walks, pretending to admire the clear blue sky and the tall buildings surrounding them. Then he checks his watch, making a show of being surprised at how early it is, and he sits down on the bench, radiating satisfaction. It's only then that he spares a glance at the woman.

She turns to him and it's like a slap in the face. He knows her: it's Ruth, Ruth Evershed from Five, one of the analysts. She opens her mouth to say his name, her green eyes wide with happy surprise, and then she realizes too, and the look turns to horror.

"You're here for Harry?"

She nods, her eyes watering.

"It's a set-up," Tom says.

"A set-up? Where's Harry? Is he all right?"

"I don't know."

Her look turns stone-hard and furious. "Tom. What have you _done_?"

"I don't know," he says again. "Run."

She looks him over, making her decision. When she gets up, she tears off the scarf and runs, her boot-heels loud against the pavement, her light brown hair flying free behind her. He watches for a moment, making sure no one is jumping up to follow her. Then he picks up the scarf and walks off in the opposite direction.

At first, he's just walking, normal pace, trying for unconcerned, but he's caught up in thought, whirring through possibilities and counter-possibilities as fast as he can, keeping his guard up in case there's a tail on him, and suddenly he's going faster. He's breathing harder, gulping in breath, and then he's running, running as hard as he can down the half-empty side-street, though he doesn't know why he's running, or where. Somewhere overhead, a clock strikes three.

* * *

The opera house at Lincoln Center is nothing like Covent Garden, but it's Wagner again, _Parsifal_. Jools Siviter's tastes don't change, even when his methods do. Tom climbs the marble stairs, takes direction to the row of box seats, waits his turn going up. He's not here for the show.

Jools arrives as the conductor takes the stage. He's wearing black tie, of course, and he shushes Tom as the first strains of the opera begin. Halfway through the prelude, Tom grabs him by the collar and pulls him out into the hall.

"You might have just asked," Jools says, smoothing down his tie. "One hates to make a scene."

"What the hell was that?" Tom demands.

" _Parsifal_. I realize -- "

"You bloody... what the hell was going on this afternoon?" He pulls Ruth's scarf out of his coat pocket, waves it at Jools like a bull.

Jools just shakes his head, like Tom's a terrible disappointment. "You know I can't tell you that. Official Secrets Act and all."

"What are you doing to Harry?"

"As I told you, Harry has certain enemies."

"Ruth? But Ruth's in love with him -- surely she's not..."

"Finally, the penny drops," Jools says, spreading his arms. "Yes, to keep his enemies from discrediting him, Harry must be saved from his own baser urges. Yes, if I make it clear to him the relationship's known, his enemies won't get the chance to. And you worked it out all on your own: Harry's Ganymedes aren't usually that bright."

Tom is disgusted. "First they don't want you to sleep with people outside the service, then they come up with elaborate plots to keep you from sleeping with people inside the service as well."

Jools raises his eyebrows, but says nothing.

"Harry's given his whole life to the Security Service. His whole life. He can't have some happiness in the bargain as well?"

"Not if it gets in the service's way. That's what giving your life to something means." Jools puts a hand on Tom's shoulder, half sympathetic, half threat. "There are wheels within wheels here that you're not a part of. That was your choice, and Harry's. If it's all so hideous, well, you have him to thank for getting you out of it, don't you?"

"Don't come to me again," Tom says. "Christine still has friends at the Agency."

"As do I. But I wouldn't worry. You've served your purpose." Jools's hand comes up to cup his face, and Tom goes very, very still. "You know, you told me once that you didn't do ambiguity. I knew then that you'd never be the sort of spook Harry wanted you to be. But I was sorry to see you go nonetheless. Your replacement's so rabbity-looking."

Tom moves, taking everything he's got left of agility and strength to throw Jools off him, slam Jools against the far wall and hold him in place. Jools lets himself be held. Tom doesn't kid himself that it's anything else.

"You listen to me," Tom says. "Anyone comes near us again, I will end them. And if Ruth or Harry reaches out to me, I'll be more than happy to point the finger right at you. Is that clear, or would you prefer me to be more ambiguous?"

"Oh, it would have been a much more interesting op if you were more ambiguous," says Jools, and his voice is full of promises Tom can't think about right now. "But we're done with you, Tom. You can stop trying to intimidate me now."

Tom steps back, a little ashamed of lashing out. It's a sign of weakness, and both of them know it. Jools straightens his tie and looks amused.

"Feel free to stay for the rest of the opera. But not if you're going to talk. I detest that."

"They deserve better," Tom can't help insisting.

"Yes. Well. Don't we all." Their eyes meet, and for the first time, Tom sees Jools Siviter assessing him as something like an equal. It's almost as unnerving as when the man ignored him. "Now, if we're done? I've already missed the prelude."

"Jools..."

Jools takes his chin again and kisses him on the cheek. For all the intimacy of the gesture, the kiss is undemanding, even paternal. "Go home, young Tom. It's over."

Tom stands out in the hallway as the music continues inside, dark and complex. He's alone. There's no paperwork to complete, no forms to fill in, no one waiting for his report. No fate of the free world resting in his hands. Just Christine, waiting up at home. There's a train every hour. He walks down the stairs, and he doesn't look back.

 

 

 


End file.
